The LSE Review of Books hosted two events as part of the 5th LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival, which ran from Tuesday 26 February – Saturday 2 March 2013. Podcasts of our events can be found below, alongside special edition podcasts featuring LSE academics reading from their favourite works of fiction.

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Beyond the Book: new forms of academic communication

Academic communication is changing. New emphasis on impact and public engagement, combined with new technologies that allow high quality and easy to use production methods are increasing the possible range of outputs from academic research. This session will hear from three researchers that have used alternative forms for their research dissemination. We will ask what strengths these forms had in comparison to traditional books and articles, their value to research users and their credibility with funders and academic assessors.

Miriam Bernard is Professor at Keele and looks at representation of ageing in drama through a partnership with the New Vic Theatre.

The Future of Publishing in a Digital Age

New technologies have the potential to revolutionise how publishing works. And the benefits for authors of faster and more accessible opportunities are obvious. But the death of books has long been predicted but has not yet come to pass. This session will look at the prospects for the future of academic and traditional publishing in the digital age. The session will examine the current state of play in digital publishing, how readers’ views are being heard and how the publishing world may change over the next decade.

Ben Galley is an author and indie publisher. He will look at will look at what technology offers for both writing and publishing.

Claire Squiresis Director of the Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication at the University of Stirling. She researches the history of the book and publishing in the 20th and 21st centuries and is director for Publications and Awards for the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing.

Damon Zucca is Publisher of Scholarly and Online Reference at Oxford University Press, where he oversees the planning and development of a range of print and digital publishing initiatives, including Oxford Biblical Studies, Oxford Bibliographies, and Oxford Handbooks Online. He has been working in scholarly book publishing for fifteen years as an editor at Garland Publishing, Routledge, and Peter Lang before coming to OUP.

Jonathan Derbyshire is culture editor of the New Statesman. His literary journalism has also appeared in a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Financial Times, the Guardian, Literary Review, Prospect and the Times Literary Supplement

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Academic Inspiration: Favourite Works of Fiction Podcast I

In this first edition of the Favourite Works of Fiction Podcast series, we hear from Conor Gearty, Professor of Human Rights Law, reading from Kafka’s The Trial; Mary Evans, Centennial Professor at the Gender Institute, reading from Louisa Alcott’s Little Women; and Sonia Livingstone, Professor of Social Psychology at the Department of Media and Communications, reading from Anthony Trollope’s The Warden.

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Academic Inspiration: Favourite Works of Fiction Podcast II

In this second edition of the Favourite Works of Fiction Podcast series, we hear from Professor Odd Arne Westad, Director of LSE IDEAS, reading from Knut Hamsun’s Sult; Professor John Van Reenen, Director of the Centre for Economic Performance, reading from the non-fiction essay The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx; Dr Fatima El Issawi, Research Fellow at POLIS, reading from The Messenger With Her Hair Long to the Springs by Lebanese poet Ounsi el-Hajj; and Dr Simon Glendinning, Reader in European Philosophy and Director of the Forum for European Philosophy, reading from Franz Kafka’s short story Before the Law.